"Tony" was the way that intimates addressed Antoinette Perry, actress, director, and guiding spirit of the American Theatre Wing, an organization of theatre professionals World War II.
Mary Antoinette Perry was born in Denver, Colo., in 1888. Wishing to emulate the theatre successes of her aunts, she made her stage debut at sixteen. In 1906, when she was eighteen, "Tony" played opposite David Warfield in the latter's stage success, The Music Master.
In 1909, she married Frank Frueauff and retired at the age of twenty-one. Following her husband's death in 1922, she returned to the stage, appearing on Broadway in Mister Pitt, Minick by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman, The Dunce Boy, Engaged!, Caught, The Masque of Venice, The Ladder, and Electra.
At forty, she turned to directing, forming an alliance with Brock Pemberton, who had produced and directed the first American production of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author in 1922. They co-directed Paul Osborn's Hotbed, which starred William Faversham. It was a flop, running only nineteen performances, but Pemberton and Perry had formed a very valuable alliance.
Perry's first solo directing effort was Katherine Roberts' Divorce Me, Dear, produced by Sidney M. Biddell. Another flop--seven performances--but Tony's skill as a director was becoming more and more appreciated. Her next effort, Christopher Comes Across, a rather wild farce about Columbus, was another quick failure, but Broadwayites were quick to fault the author of the play, Hawthorne Hurst, rather than Miss Perry.
Then--success! Lawrence Riley's Personal Appearance, with Gladys George as a movie star making a personal appearance in Scranton, Pa., ran for 501 performances at the Henry Miller Theatre. The comedy was the first big hit of the 1934-35 season, and the published version of the play was dedicated to Pemberton and Perry--once again, the co-directors.
Pemberton produced Ceiling Zero, a comedy-drama about pilots, but this time, Perry received solo credit as director. The play, with brilliant special effects and a cast headed by Osgood Perkins, just made it over the "hit" line with 104 performances. Tony was beginning to hit her stride.
Antoinette Perry was getting better and better as a director. Kiss the Boys Good-Bye, by Clare Boothe, was at once a send-up of the current attempts to find someone to play Scarlett O'Hara in the film version of Gone With the Wind and an attack on what Miss Boothe called "southernism," which she claimed was a possible "inspiration or forerunner on Facism." Tony's direction was nothing short of first rate, and the comedy ran for 286 performances, one of the true hits of the 1938-39 theatrical season.
Lady in Waiting, which starred Gladys George, was Tony's next Pemberton assignment, and was "almost a hit," running for eighty-seven performances. Out From Under, with John Alexander, Ruth Weston, and Vivian Vance, was a quick flop, as was Glamour Preferred (eleven performances). Cuckoos on the Hearth ran only sixteen weeks, but Janie, a play about teenagers on the order of Junior Miss. was a hit, running for 642 performances. Pillar to Post was a wartime comedy that misfired, running only 31 performances.
Tony was, arguably, Broadway's only top female director not at the head of her own company (as opposed to Eva Le Gallienne). Almost all of her assignments were given her by producer Brock Pemberton, and the two were a familiar team to those familiar with the Broadway stage. It is, perhaps, ironic that their most emphatic success turned out to be the last play Perry ever directed. That was Harvey, which put Frank Fay back on top as a major name on Broadway.
Fay played Elwood P. Dowd, whose companion, seen only by himself, was a 6 ft. 3-1/2 in. tall rabbit (actually a pooka, a half animal-half human figure prominent in ancient Celtic mythology). Fay (unlike James Stewart in the film version) played Dowd as an alcoholic--a drunk. Unlike Fay himself, however, Elwood was a happy, pleasant drunk; Frank Fay, under Perry's smart direction, did not overplay it. The result was what many have called the greatest performance in the history of the Broadway stage.
When the U.S. entered World War II, The American Wing took the lead in organizing entertainments for American servicemen. Pemberton, while still in his twenties, had been one of the founders of The Wing in 1917, and Tony worked with superhuman energy for it during World War II. These were, in many ways, her finest hours.
When the war ended, Tony became ill. She died, of cancer, in 1948; she was not yet sixty years of age.
Her friends in the American Theatre Wing called for a series of awards to be made in her name and in her honor, to the plays, directors, actors, etc., of each season, in perpetuity. They were named the Antoinette Perry Awards--known by all as the Tony Awards.
This year, 2017, marked the one hundredth anniversary of the American Theatre Wing. The Wing was founded by seven suffragettes, but Brock Pemperton, then twenty-nine years old, was an important force in The Wing's early years.
It is hard to know the real Antoinette Perry. Her work for the American Theatre Wing, like her work as a director, was largely bound up with Brock Pemberton. That makes sense; the theatre is and always was a very social business. (Tony never remarried after the death of her husband.) What cannot be denied is that Antoinette Perry was greatly appreciated--one might even say beloved--by, not just those in the American Theatre Wing, but by all those in the theatre.
May the Antoinette Perry Awards continue to bring honor and notice to its many recipients--and, of course, to Tony.
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